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4 HEXRY II- TUCKER, Kdltor NO ADVANTAGE IN INSPIRA TION. We are sometimes inclined to envy the men of old who were inspired of <Jod to write the Holy Scriptures, and to imagine that there were some peculiar advantages enjoyed by them which are denied to us. A little re flection, we think, will lead to the con •clusion that if there is any unevenness in the distribution of blessing, the ad wantage is on our side. The men who were inspired, often spoke more wisely than they knew. The real revelation, that is, the proper understanding of the things which ■these men were inspired to say, is more to us than it was to them. The revelation came through them a? the voice of a speaker passes through a trumpet. He who is spoken to hears and understands, but the trumpet through which the sound passes is deaf and inappreciative. The evangelical prophet Isaiah doubtless had some ■conception of the gospel that was to come, and of which he spoke, but his conceptions must have been very in adequate. The Apostles themselves who had the advantage of all that all the proph ets had written with the additional ad vantage of seeing prophecy fulfilled with their own eyes and who were un <ler the personal instructions of our Savior himself were very slow learners; and from this we may infer that what what was known of Christ before his advent, whether by inspired or unin spired men, was very little as compared with the knowledge possessed by us. In a later day when the writers of the New Testament were inspired for that purpose, they spoke the truth as it were by piecemeal. Each contribu ted his quota, but neither communica ted all. They are like the various art isans who make the different pieces of machinery in a watch. One makes the spring and another the balance wheel, and another something else, but no one of them could make a watch ; possibly no one of them would even know how to use a watch. The man who owns the watch when it is complete is in much better condition than the mere mechanics who manufactured its various parts. The writers of the Scriptures were in a certain sense little better than mechanics; little better than mere amanuenses who wrote what they were told to write. Some wrote this por tion, and some that, but no one of them ever saw it all. John it is true outlived all the others, and made the final contribution to the work, and it is possible as an object of thought, that he may have seen all that we have seen, but it is in the highest degree im probable, and even if he did he is the only one of the inspired men who did. The view of revealed truth that each inspired man had, was only a partial view. The bearing of other truths re vealed to other men on what he him self had uttered, was not within his grasp. As all of it is necessary to a complete understanding of God’s will as revealed to us, ( for none of it is su perfluous,) those who had less than all, had not enough ; consequently the sys tem as a whole must have been inade quately conceived by them. We are in better position ; we have ita.ll; we are omniscient in this sense at least, that all that God has to say to men lies open before us. The best in terpreter of Scripture is Scripture itself. This we have, and this the writers of ■Scripture had not. Moreover, the mere physical form of books as we have them paged and numbered, and of con venient size, gives us an advantage •which is almost inconceivable. More over, we have concordances and other books of like character, by means of which, with a few hours’ study, we can spread before our eyes all that God has •ever communicated to man on any given topic. What would an apostle have given for the same privilege! In addition to this we have the comments and explanations of thousands of the ablest minds the world has ever pro duced, so that on any given subject we have not only all that God has reveal ed, but all that man has thought; the wisdom and learning of the race are at -our command. The apostles and evan gelists, and certainly the prophets, might well envy us. Nor is there anything surprising in all this. It is to be expected that God’s goodness will unfold, and develop itself more and more fully as time advances. Such is the analogy of providence. There was but a dim revelation when it was said that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Our first mother in her ignorance thought that the coming of Cain was the fulfil ment of the promise. What a crush ing disappointment there must have been when she lost one son by death, and s' other by worse than death, and inaddition lost her hope! As time pro gressed things were made more clear. When the apostles saw the Sun ofßigb teousness arise, they doubtless thought they had seen all the glory; but it was •only the rising that they saw. Nor have we yet reached midnoon. There is more glory to come. Not that more Xruth is to be revealed; we have now THE CHRISTIAN INDEX AND SOUTH-WESTERN BAPTIST: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1881. all that there will be until the advent of a new dispensation ; but as the world advances, we shall have abetter knowl edge of what is revealed. Much proph ecy is yet to be fulfilled, and these ful fillments, as they occur, will unlock many a mystery and make it plain. Those who come after us will see things that we do not see; and thus it will continue until the second coming of our Lord. Let us thank God for the glorious privileges we enjoy, and be faithful in contributing our share for the benefit of generations yet to come. We are the heirs of the centuries that have preceded us; let us transmit the inheritance with its due increase to the centuries of the future. INTEMPERANCE IN WORK. The great majority of mankind are too indolent to require any caution against over-work; but there are those to whom such a caution is necessary. These are generally found among those, 1 who would be classed as the very best ' members of our human family. Num -1 bers of these diminish their own use- ■ fulness, and shorten their own lives by 1 making unwarrantable drafts on their • powers, physical or mental, or both. Thus the world is deprived of some of its greatest treasures, and theconscien -1 tious but misguided men who are the ' authors of the loss, are themselves the ■ losers of their own greatest reward. It is speaking well for a man, to say that his greatest fault is a virtue, for indust ry is certainly a virtue; but this is not a fair statement of the case. The fault is not a virtue; there is no fault in in dustry ; the fault is the excess. All excesses are wrong. The command to pray without ceasing does not require that we should spend all our time on our knees. In a sense, the praise of God should be continually on our lips, but this does not imply that we should never speak of the ordinary affairs of life. Generous giving, and giving to the point of sacrifice, is a Christian duty, but we are not required to starve ourselves to supply the wants of others. The secret meditations of the closet are profitable, but it is neither needful nor right, that we should shut ourselves up for life in cloisters. The devont study of God’s word is indispensable to Chris tian life, but it does not follow that we should spend all our days in this study, to the exclusion of everything else. The most heavenly graces are not to be exercised in such away as to make life an impracticable thing. God has not signified to us, either in his pro vidence or in his word, that we are to take the world other than as we find it, —a matter-of-fact place where the natural wants, both of our bodies and of our souls, are to be provided for. Labor of some kind is necessary to pro mote these ends, but excess in labor, like any other excess defeats instead of accomplishing its own objects. Yet ■ there are those who seem to be blind 1 to this fact, or to imagine that excess ■ in labor is impossible. “After all is 1 done,” say they, “we shall be unprofit- able servants, and therefore we ought ' to expend all our energies to our latest breath, and even then we shall fall short of our duty.” It is true that even at best we are unprofitable ser vants, but one who overtaxes his strength, makes himself more unprofit able than he would otherwise be. We are not our own ; we are God’s; and therefore we ought to economise the energy that belongs to him, so as to make it in the highest degree effective. We should bring the same common sense to bear on this, which we use in the management of our own affairs. No beast of burden is ever put to his full strength continuously. Even for short periods, a margin is usually left between the practicable and the pos sible, and ample time for rest is allowed to give the waning powers opportunity to recuperate. Nor is it mere humanity that prompts us to do this; the most heartless of task-masters, having an eye to their own interest, do the same thing from policy. We are the Lord’s servants, and we have the direction of our own energies. We ought so to direct them as to waste nothing, and wear out nothing prematurely. We have seen some in early manhood, afflicted with infirmities in body and mind, from nothing but over-work. We have seen men of fifty laid aside, who but for ex cessive efforts in proper avocations, might have been active, and useful and happy, till three score and ten. What a loss to the world I What a misfortune to themselves! Are they free from guilt? When one ends his life sudden ly we call him a suicide. What name shall we apply to those who by grad ual process shorten their days? Os course, it will be said, that there is a difference in the intention. But does the end sanctify the means? When a man does what he knows, or ought to know is wrong, is he not res ponsible for the consequences? In the days of slavery, if a man had been unwise enough, not to say wicked enough to require such unreasonable, service of the laborer as to shorten his life, would he not have been guilty of murder? True, in the supposed case, the intention was not to kill the slave, but simply to fill the master’s purse, but this was done in reckless disregard of human life, sacrificing the precious gift for lucre. Even human law con strues recklessness of life into malice, and malice is at the bottom of murder. Now if a man is reckless of his own life is there not in this the germ of suicide? The excuse to be made for those who are wearing and wasting themselves away, is that they have not thought of these things, and are not conscious of the effect of their own overwrought zeal. The object of this writing is to make them think, and to make them conscious. No man ought to work, no man has a right to work in such way as to impair his own health, for health is the stuff that life is made of. The trouble is, that men injure their health without knowing it. If appetite or sleep is impaired by work, the health will suffer for it. Is fatigue excessive? No animal can long endure' excessive fatigue, and we are animals. The ruggedest and hardiest brute cannot be habitually put to full strain without succumbing to the cruel ty. Nor is any man’s power of endur ance sufficient to sustain him under daily effort, carried to the point, or near to the point of exhaustion. Exces sive weariness is the sign which na ture gives that labor has been carried too far; and such weariness frequently recurring is the protest of nature against self-murder. REST. In another article we have had much to say about the evils of over-work. Perhaps what we shall now say about rest will seem like a repetition in sub stance of what was said before. If it be repetition, we trust that it will not be vain repetition ; moreover, if we re peat the lesson, we follow a good ex ample, for the providence of God, in most of the habitable parts of the earth, repeats the same lesson every twenty-four hours. The perpetual re currence of day and night is the veto of Providence on perpetual labor, of some kinds at least, and when men, by artificial means, supply the light which God has withdrawn, they must either compensate for this by rest at other times, or else submit to penalties. The weekly recurrence of the Sab bath on the seventh day, when the ox and the ass are included in the bless ing, is another voice from heaven pro claiming the necessity and duty of rest. Heaven itself is represented by the Spirit as a place to be longed for, because it is a place of rest. Nothing is more inexpressibly sweet than the assurance that “There remaineth a rest therefore for the people of God.” Rest implies labor, for without labor rest would not be needed. Each involves the other, and thus both stand on the same footing, and both are ordained of God. Time spent in rest is not time wasted; but time spent in labor that ought to be spent in rest, is time worse than wasted. All the rest that is needed ought to be allowed ; every mo ment less than enough is disobedience to God, every such moment robs God of a certain portion of energy and ser vice which is his due; it also robs the sufferer of his due, and is as cruel as it is foolish. In our resting hours, when from the resources of nature we are importing that strength which belongs to God, we are glorifying him as really, and as much, and as acceptably, as when we are putting forth our mighti est energies. To the saint, it is a sweet and comforting thought, that even his repose is worship. The pillow is soft and the bed luxurious, when we know that the hand of the Lord has prepar ed them, and that he invites us to their enjoyment, and that he watches over us with complacency as we sink to slumber. At mid-day, when tired nerves or muscles demand relaxation, and we fall for a few monents on the couch, or lean back in the great chair, or recline on the sward, it makes the air balmy about us, and soothes to hap pier rest, to think that the smile of God is upon us, as that of a mother on her sleeping babe, and that our very inert ness is accepted as praise. In our eating and in our drinking we may glorify God, and when we re member this, the water that slakes our thist is more refreshing, and the food that sustains us is more appetizing, for then soul and body both may feast to gether. Oh, if the heart be right be fore God all is well. For then wheth er we wake or sleep, eat or drink, or whatever we do, the peace of God is upon us. In active business our thoughts are engrossed witfi the work before us; we wrestle with earthly things, and these wholly engage us; but when the hour of rest arrives, we may let go the earth and take hold of heaven. Sleep is sweet but waking rest is even sweeter. We are conscious of its enjoyableness as we are not in sleep, and at the same time in the very act of rest, we hold lively communion with God. Here the pleasure of rest and of activity, of ac tion and of inaction are are combined, while soul and body both enjoy them selves together. We know not how sweet rest is, nor how sweet any thing is, unless the love of God so pervades our nature that we reeognize his goodness in all things. Let us then enhance our enjoyment of this life, and catch a little foretaste of the bliss that lies beyond, by thank ing God for night, and thanking God for the Sabbath and thanking God for the intermediate periods of repose, and thanking God for everything. Our brother R. B. Womack, late of the Baptist Reflector, abandons his p> sition as editor of that journal to take charge of the Arkansas Evangel, to be published at Dardanelles, Arkansas. We wish him great success in his new field of labor, and pray that he may both be blest and be a blessing. MORE PRACTICAL. We have said much in this issue about self-abuse from over-work, and about the value and luxury of rest, but we dealt with general principles, and made no special practical application of them. We have now to say that no class of men in the world are in geeater need of such counsel*than the pastors of city churches. Each one of them has to preach twice on every Sunday to the same intelligent audi ence, besides which he must lecture one night in the week, besides which he must frequently speak at funerals, besides which he must visit the sick, besides which he must be a leader in all benevolent operations, besides which he must respond to innumerable other drafts upon his time and upon his at tention. Even if the church be a small one it will furnish work enough, if the work be properly done, to call for and exhaust- all the energies of any living man. If the church be a very large one, some of the work must either be wholly neglected or very im perfectly done. For the pastor there is no Sabbath. The day which brings rest to others brings none to him. Now to come at once to the point, what we have to say is this, that a pastor ought to have at least as great privileges as an ox or an ass; and as these coarse brutes have a right conferred by the Almighty him self amid the thunders of Sinai, to one day of rest in seven, a pastor has the same right. As the Sabbath is necessarily a day of hard labor to him, he ought to be allowed another day in the week to take his rest. His people should cheerfully acquiesce in this, but whether they do or not, it is his right to claim such a day. More than this: it is his duty to himself, to his family, to his people and to his God to take the day. Let him select which day he pleases. On that day he should not do any work. It ought to be as nearly as possible a day of perfect idleness. Let him as far as possible dismiss all care from his mind. Let there be no study of any kind, and no reading ex cept for mere amusement. Let there be no writing, and no thought of next Sunday’s sermons. If there can be no thought of anything, so much the better. Let there be no visiting except for his own entertainment, unless in cases of necessity. Os course his du ties to the sick and to the dying must be attended to, even at the sacrifice of his day of rest. But except in emer gencies like these, the day ought to be wholly his own. In general, when bodily exercise has been sufficient, he ought to spend much of his time in the open air. When night comes, if he has taken just enough exercise to make his sleep sweet, the day will have been spent better than he could possi bly have spent it in any other way. He will have had his Sabbath—a Sab bath which he needs as much, to say 1 the least, as the beasts of burden. feut is it not a pity to throw away one seventh of his time? Let the in quirer settle that question with the author of the decalogue. But if there were no decalogue, nature teaches that year by year a man or any other ani mal can do more and better work in six days, resting on the seventh, than in seven days not resting at all. The day is not thrown away; on the con trary, many days, and often many years are gained, by a proper obser vance of the laws to which God has subjected our nature. He who made us knew what proportion of our time ought to be consecrated to rest; and if he has laid one-seventh of our time on that altar, there let it remain. It is immaterial what day is se lected ; all we insist upon is that it is the duty of every city pastor to set apart one day in seven for rest; a day not to be infringed upon except for providential causes. Every scholar who has studied the Bible devoutly, has doubtless made for himself by the aid of such helps as scholars have, most of the changes which the New Version adopts. This class of readers will not there fore be likely to be disturbed by these chan ges, nor will they cause in such minds dis trust or skepticism. But a large class of the most devout readers of the Bible —seven- tenths perhaps of all such readers—have never had the question of accuracy in trans lation once raised, and are wedded by long usage to the exact words of the Book which they revere. Let all harsh utterances about the tenacity with which such cling to their old and sacred associations be suppressed in the spirit of charity. Many godly souls will, of necessity, be perplexed and pained by the process, which is sure ultimately to give the revised version general acceptance among the people.—Hartford Religious Her ald. And these remarks are very wise. Many of our readers, indeed most of them, make no great pretensions to scholarship. TJiey will be surprised and pained at many of the changes which they will find in the new ver sion. It is well for them to know that nearly all these changes have been an ticipated by the learned, and will be acquiesced in by them. It is well, too, far scholars to be reminded that they must deal gently with those who have had no opportunity to be familar with such matters, and that the attachment which devout but unlearned people have for the very words of the English Bible, which has been their life-long solace and hope, must be treated with respect and tenderness. We are in sympathy with the masses on this question; we love the very words. Yet we are also in sympathy with the re- visers; we want better words, if better can be had. Various passages, longer or shorter, will be omitted. We are sorry to part with them ; still, if they are not a part of the word of God, we are ready to discard them. But it is safe to say that not a word will be omitted which will, in the least degree, affect any of the teachings of the Book as we have been accustomed to understand it. THE SOUTH. Some good may come out of Naza reth. The South is not so desperately slow and sinful as many represent. It has lacked the policy to proclaim its piety and flutter its phylacteries more frequently before the world. Sound ing brass seldom fails to draw admira tion. The South has not found out the art of keeping showy wares in big windows, nor the trick of crying figs in the name of the prophet. This ab sence of display and pretense has en tailed loss of consideration, even at home. Self-respect begets public-respect. Clamorous abuse may make modest virtue itself penitent for its noblest deeds. We are not blind to the faults of our people, nor are we ready to befoul our own nest. Men who put to hazard life and for tune on abstract questions of constitu tional construction were not wanting in a keen sense of principle, nor de void of chivalrous courage. The bee stings the hand of the robber, though its act of defense always decrees its own ruin. The terrapin is submissive, safe and ignoble. The image of the gallant insect living for the public good, but ready to die to avenge the intrusion of an enemy, is embroidered on the robes of royalty. The creeping animal, shut up in self, lives to long age, but to no honor. A dead bee is better than acres of living terrapins. The gory body of Leonidas is dear to the heart of the world, while the herd of craven Hindus under the British yoke is despised. The South is sneered at for a mini mum of energy (the favorite word is “push”), and for slackness in continu ity. And yet these unarmed agricul turists, with ports blockaded, fought a rich, manufacturing, commercial peo ple of five times the population, (fit for war, and with the world as a re cruiting field) for four years. From the archives at Washington it appears that four times as many men were en listed by the Federal Government as by the Confederate. In the last cam paign, from the report of the Secreta ry of War, Mr. Stanton, there were fourteen Federal soldiers to every Con federate in the field. These fourteen men had all the resources of physical power, railroads, mechanical inven tions, arms, commissariat, but were glad enough when their one man, hungry, ragged, and out of ammuni tion, fighting against the elements con cluded to surrender. The South has been charged with scantiness of fortitude. Let us turn back a leaf. When the conquerors at war had taken away the weapons of the Southern soldiers and bound them by an oath to follow peace, then the squaws—the politicians shunning the fight, but ever ready to torture prison ers—were turned loose upon the South. How they invented new instruments of insult, how they overthrew the whole fabric of social and political life, how the African from the mud of the rice field was ordered to put his foot on the neck of scholars and statesmen, how Judas at home and Barrabas from abroad joined hands and became the fiduciaries of the public purse and the protectors of private rights, how the fair works of civilization in the South seem to sink, while the ooze and mon sters of the deep rose over it—are not all these things written in the shameful chronicle of that period? A Sioux chief captured by a heredi tary enemy and tied to a stake never stood with more stoical courage while the slow fire peeled flesh from bone. The South endured till Greeley was shocked, and rebuked the brutal wretches for their cannibal instincts. We hear a sneer, from the regions northward (and sometimes a faint echo of it near home), at the want of enterprise in the South. Let us come to facts. What was the condition of the South at the close of the war? Nothing survived in the way of prop erty that was not indestructible or un convertible. The loss in personal and real property (leaving out the slaves) was two billion, just twice the indem nity France paid to Germany. This loss was two-thirds of all the property in the South. In addition to this loss, the expenses of the war on the Con federate side (which was included in, and represented by, the Confederate bonds and treasury notes) amounting to a hundred million, was, as it were, paid at once by the confiscation and forced repudiation of these securities and currency. In addition to these two vast sums, the South was saddled with its part of the two and a half billions of the United States war debt! And over and above these huge debts and losses was piled fourteen millions of private obligations based on slave property, and worthless. In a word, the accumulations of two centuries of industry and economy were swept away in a day. The loss of so much reserved wealth drags any people to the rear in civilization in the modern struggle for preeminence among na- tions. And worse. The seed-corn had been eaten, the ox had fed the hungry soldier, and the plow fallen under him in the fight. Mills and the instruments of husbandry were burned by the enemy. Few have ever forgotten the ruin wrought on Prussia by the enemies of Frederick. Macaulay paints it as the most woeful picture of the modern times, yet Frederick lost only one hundred and seventeen thousand out of a population of four and a half mil lion. The South lost two hundred and and twenty-two thousand out of five and a half million. The boys, the grandfathers and the cripples were left to redeem a land overwhelmed with in dustrial, political and financial deso lation. What other race on the face of the earth could have risen? The Greek never rose to manhood after the Ro man conquest. It was living Greece no more. In a single decade the South built again her burnt altars, lustrated her temples of justice, put to flight the political brigands, turned the balance of trade of the country by the exports of her products, and so made good the war debt of her adversary. In ten years political power in Congress was in her hands, and prosperity in her homes. It was a triumph of character, for titude, patience, industry, and states manship, of prime manhood, over ad versity without a parallel in all history. Henry Ward Beecher, returning from a tour through this section pro claimed from Plymouth pulpit “that the South is without a rival in the annals of nations in all the grand vir tues that adorn the human race.” We do not think it worth while for a Southern man to be ashamed of his people, nor of the facts of history. The Romans probably destroyed, with cunning farsight, the annals of Carthage, that they might be justified of posterity for the savage usage of their rivals. A Phoenician of the African city suppressing the truth to placate the conqueror was impossible to the race that gave Hannibal to the world. Let us defend Truth. It’s a Chris tian duty.— Richmond Christian Ad vocate. A writer in the columns of our highly esteemed exchange, The Watch man, having undertaken to give a cat alogue of the heresies which did not take root in New England, mentioned two. Our brother, the editor of that jour nal, says that spiritualism did not orig inate in New England but in New York. Careful students of geography must be aware that the last named State is not far from New England; in fact, the distance is not a hair’s breadth. He furthermore assures us that the strongest hold of Spiritualism is not in New England. The editor is apt to be right about most fhings, and may be so in this instance. But any city must be in bad condition if it is more afflicted with this distemper than Boston. The Banner of Light, an eight-page journal in the interest of Spiritualism, published in Boston, lies open on the table before us. We no tice in it five notices of Spiritualistic meetings in Boston every Sunday, two every Friday, and one every Thursday. The same paper contains the adver tisements of more than thirty professed ‘ “mediums” residing in Boston, who offer to heal all manner of diseases. Send to any of them by mail your au tograph, with a lock of your hair, and one dollar, and you will be at once re lieved of the dollar. In this paper we receive forty columns of Spiritual istic talk from Boston every week. Judging from these we should suppose that that city is honey-combed all over with the heresy. The Investigator telle a different tale, and judging by that, one would think that Boston had' pretty nearly surren dered to atheism; while the Christian Leader would lead to the conclusion that Universalism is in the ascendant. We know that these facts give as much pain to Brother Watch man as they do to us. We record with pleasure the fact that there are many evangelical papers published in Boston untainted with heresy, and among them some of the best in the United States. We are pleased to learn that the circulation of the Watchman is upwards of seventeen thousand. It is the only Baptist paper in the United States that is older than The Index ; it has the advantage of us by two years. We shall not give up our hopes of Boston so long as the Watchman is published. But getting back to the subject, if the strong-hold of the isms is not in New England, we should thank our Boston brother to tell us where it is. Acknowledgment.—ln our issue of January 6th, we published a story by Mrs. H. E. Blakeslee, with the head ing “Well Done,” which originally ap peared in a paper called the Royal Road, published by David 0. Cook, in Chicago. By accident or oversight we failed to give proper credit for the arti ticle, and having, at this late day, dis covered our mistake, we make haste to correct it, and to offer our apologies to the wronged party. One of the “Star” preachers of Chi cago recently announced that “Our new Mayor” would be the subject of his evening discourse.